


Charon

by tempestshakes



Series: sweet birds, sad songs [5]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Beth Lives, F/M, Gen, Implied Daryl Dixon/Beth Greene, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-13
Updated: 2016-11-13
Packaged: 2018-08-30 16:45:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8540725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tempestshakes/pseuds/tempestshakes
Summary: Gratuitous poetry. "Let me tell you about the fire burning in his belly. / His spine unbending like a wick, / his heart an eager flame."





	

**Author's Note:**

> \+ What I write when I can't write anything else. Here's to the hope that my big move across the country will inspire me to start writing!  
> \+ music: "isaldamom" by akron/family

Let me tell you about the fire burning in his belly.  
     His spine unbending like a wick,  
     his heart an eager flame.  
This fire boasts teeth, has canines, sharpened  
     to a point and plated with steel.

          And this isn’t the way the world’s supposed to be—

Until yes it is:  
     Nature knows balance as an inescapable certainty,  
     certainly merciful and pure. Remember the glaciers  
     and remember the floods and never forget the  
     what came out of the ashes of wildfires.

Let me tell you about the lost trails.  
     How he followed the light into the thicket,  
     until it vanished.  
The light left a ghost and the ghost loves a decent man and the man  
     is a phantom, too.

—

He was with her and he’ll never leave her.  
     He never came back.  
 _(I was with Beth)_  
     He never came back.

—

a woman stumbles into their shambling city proclaiming,  
     i _was saved by a woman made of sunlight_ , and he

gnaws on the possibility for weeks, lets it fester like sore on his brain  
until he’s lost his fingernails and his heart is an open blister.  
his sleep is burdened with dreams of _what ifs_ —a luxury he’s never indulged in,  
an addiction, a desire. he wipes gamey blood on his lips  
to remember the taste, and his stained mouth skims over the circular scar  
on the back of his hand.

     It’s on fire:  
          the faith lying dormant inside him.

It burns.

—

People whisper.  
     The naysayers pluck clouds to show him that he’s dreaming.  
     They bind his ankles with doubt  
     and thorny brambles, and he bleeds with every step,  
     every step.  
They don’t see what he sees in the face of light and maybe he’s a prophet  
     sucking on honeycomb and locusts,  
     but oh how he _knows_.

He’s a decent man,  
     more humble than the lowly dandelion weeds,  
     and just as soft. The carving of his shoulders belies the  
     gentleness and duty he carries upon them. A man without decorum,  
     a man willing to grow from ashes and declare, i _ain’t dead yet_.

So he tries to find the woman made of sunlight,  
     and she finds him—  
 _(I ain’t dead yet.)_  
     and the ghost is a girl who loves a decent man and the man is

               a wildfire.

—

Let me tell you about the fires burning in their bellies,  
victorious lunacy raging bright against their breastbones

          And this is the way world’s supposed to be.

They have a flame and it eats voraciously,  
consuming life and the only thing to do is follow it from the inside,

into the euphonic murmurs of the forest, twining fingers like vines,  
     This is real. This is real.

                         “you real?”  
                                  _yes._

 

This is real.


End file.
